The greatest thing ever said about age was said by the great Negro Leagues pitcher, Leroy “Satchel” Paige, who memorably said:

“How old would you be if you didn’t know how old you are?”

Having just gone through lung surgery at Sharp Hospital (unrelated to smoking, which I’ve never done and have always hated), I’ve been asked if that experience changed my perspective about life?

No, it did not.

I still think Donald Trump is an unmitigated disaster for America, if not the world – both now and in the future.

But at age 81 I will escape the more serious consequences of Trump’s presidency, but my children and grandchildren will not – and neither will yours.

I think I wrote previously in this space that I was done with President Trump, but clearly I’m not.

You cannot have spent 51-years in and around government, of having worked for three moral giants of the U.S. Senate, and just walk away. The issues are too great, the stakes too large, the moral witness of America too demanding to ignore.

So, I’ve returned to the subject of the braggart, blowhard, and bully, living at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue – or is it Trump Tower in NYC, Mar-a-Lago in Florida, or Trump National Golf Club in New Jersey? All the while the cost of Secret Service protection for President Trump and his family may reach $400 million for his first term, says Vanity Fair. In contrast, Secret Service protection for President Obama was $97 million for eight years (source, Judicial Watch).

Having worked for Bobby Kennedy I understand the need to protect presidents, vice presidents, and candidates for president, but the staggering cost of protecting President Trump and his family, is beyond anything ever imagined.

But the cost of protecting President Trump, is not the issue here. It is everything else about him that’s at issue.

So, let me get to that:

Having run three public forums a total of 88 collective years; public forums that have presented close to 2,000 programs in the public interest; programs that have featured a wide range of opinions, from conservative to liberal, I have a marked tolerance for other people’s views, but if you think President Trump is okay, that he’s doing a good job, that his personal and denigrating attacks on other is acceptable behavior for the president of the United States – an office occupied by, among others, Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, TR, FDR, Eisenhower, and Ronald Reagan – if you think talking about grabbing a “woman’s pussy” is just locker room talk, if stiffing small business owners and causing their demise, is not a problem (since you are not the business owner), that five bankruptcies is an okay business practice – If any of this is thought by you, behavior appropriate to a president, then here’s the deal:

If you say, in particular, you are a person of the Christian faith, as it appears many President Trump supporters claim, and accept any of the above as acceptable behavior for a confessing Christian, then you have failed New Testament 101 – and by your endorsement of President Trump have defamed the Christian faith.

I write that as a Christian, one who understands that God’s grace is available to all, President Trump included, but who also understands that anyone claiming that faith is thereby obligated to demonstrate a change in values, a change in behavior, that they have become a new person in Christ, that they have rejected the old and embraced the new, and will strive daily to exemplify their Lord’s life and teachings.

If you see any of that in Trump, I am willing to hear your point of view.

But let me segue, slightly, to what George Will had to say recently in the Washington Post; the George Will who withdrew his lifelong membership in the Republican Party because of President Trump:

“No longer do we hold these truths to be self-evident, we hold all truths to be self-evident, even the ones that aren’t true. All things are knowable and every opinion on any subject is as good as any other. In the movie ‘Animal House’, when the epically unruly fraternity is hauled before the student court, the fraternity member who is going to defend it, when asked by a fellow member if he knows what he is doing, replies, ‘Take it easy, I’m pre-law.’ When someone says, ‘I thought you were pre-med’, he replies, ‘What’s the difference?’ What indeed.”

And, finally, this from Michael Gerson, also in the Washington Post:

“But we do not have a normal president, as President Trump’s Paris agreement unsigning statement made clear. President Trump is applying the worst kind of populism to foreign affairs. The problem he seeks to solve is a global conspiracy against American workers. A conspiracy utilizing climate science as a type of subversion or sabotage. A conspiracy including our closest allies, friends and trading partners, who ‘went wild, they were so happy’ at the prospect of greater American poverty and suffering.

“This is far, far away from the post-World War II American foreign policy tradition — which located American success in an expanding order of economic, political and social freedom. President Trump is critiquing not ‘globalism’ but the Atlantic Alliance that prevailed in the Cold War and a Pacific strategy that has deterred aggression and increased mutual prosperity through trade for more than half a century.

“’No people can live to itself alone,’ said that pernicious globalist Dwight Eisenhower in his second inaugural address. ‘The economic need of all nations — in mutual dependence — makes isolation an impossibility; not even America’s prosperity could long survive if other nations did not also prosper. No nation can longer be a fortress, lone and strong and safe. And any people, seeking such shelter for themselves, can now build only their own prison.’”

I’m a Democrat and progressive, so you may ignore my views of President Trump, but if you ignore Will and Gerson, two greatly respected conservative intellectuals, you have merely exposed your own ignorance.

Happy 4th!

George Mitrovich is a San Diego civic leader. He may be reached at gmitro35@gmail.com.

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